OpenPhone Cost for Small Business 2026: Starter, Business and Scale

Three tiers and where each fits

OpenPhone publishes its pricing on the OpenPhone pricing page. Three tiers: Starter, Business and Scale. Starter is the SOHO entry, Business is the team-of-five-to-twenty tier, Scale is for established support teams.

Starter at $15 includes one shared phone number per user, unlimited calling and SMS to US and Canada, voicemail with transcription, basic auto-attendant, group calling and the OpenPhone mobile, desktop and web apps. The Slack and HubSpot integrations are included at the basic tier (Salesforce and Zapier require Business).

Business at $23 adds call recording, advanced ring groups, internal threads (private messages between teammates on a customer conversation), AI call summaries and transcripts, analytics, and the deeper integrations (Salesforce, Zapier, Pipedrive). This is the realistic entry for any team where multiple reps share customer-facing conversations.

Scale at $35 adds priority support, audit logs, dedicated account management and a few advanced controls. For teams of 20-plus reps doing high-volume conversations it justifies itself. Below that scale Business is enough.

Shared numbers and internal threads: the workflow that sells OpenPhone

Traditional VoIP treats a phone number as belonging to one user. If a customer texts your sales number and the rep is out, the message sits unread until the rep returns. OpenPhone treats a number as a shared workspace; multiple teammates can see and respond to the same conversation thread. This is the workflow shift that distinguishes it from RingCentral, Vonage and others.

Internal threads layer onto this: teammates can comment privately on a customer message without the customer seeing. So a rep can ask "anyone know what we promised this customer in January?" inline in the conversation thread, and another teammate can answer without disrupting the customer-visible exchange. For startups and service businesses where context-passing matters more than call routing, this saves significant friction.

The opposite end of the workflow spectrum, the call-centre with dedicated rep ownership of accounts, fits poorly with OpenPhone. If your team is set up so each rep owns specific accounts and is the only one allowed to call them, the shared-number model adds confusion rather than removing it. Nextiva or RingCentral with their account-ownership-first workflow are the better fit.

Fee composition: lean

OpenPhone's fee structure is simpler than the legacy carriers. The FUSF pass-through follows the same USAC factor (data on the USAC contribution factor page). The regulatory recovery line is the lowest in our field, reflecting OpenPhone's modern stack with fewer legacy compliance cost-of-goods to recover.

Net fee load of roughly $3.50 per user puts OpenPhone alongside Zoom Phone as the leanest providers on surcharges.

Team rollups

Where OpenPhone genuinely wins, where it does not

OpenPhone wins for startups, SaaS companies, professional services firms (consulting, design, agency) and any team where customer conversations are collaborative rather than account-owned. The shared-number-with-internal-threads workflow is unique in our field and removes real friction from team handoffs.

It does not win for HIPAA-regulated practices (no BAA on public plans), for traditional call-centre workflows (rep-account ownership pattern fits poorly), for international-heavy teams (no bundled international voice) and for enterprises with deep integration needs (Salesforce coverage is present but shallower than RingCentral's).

Best comparison for the SOHO / 1-to-5 person segment is OpenPhone versus Grasshopper. Grasshopper is cheaper at $14 flat (not per user) but has no AI features, no shared-number workflow, and a smaller mobile-app footprint. OpenPhone is the modern pick for any startup; Grasshopper is the legacy pick for solopreneurs who want one number and one ring-to-multiple-devices.

Frequently asked questions